The pull and lift system for transporting roofing materials generally relates to truck bed equipment and more specifically to combined pull bar and lift table operating relative to a truck bed. The present invention provides for efficient pulling of roofing pallets upon a lift table and then timely elevation of the lift table to the base of a pedestal conveyor.
Present day buildings have roofs with various coverings. The coverings is include asphalt shingles, membranes such as EPDM, and tar to name a few. Over time, the covering upon a roof wears from exposure to the elements, hailstorms, activities of birds and animals, errant projectiles, the rare meteorite, and the like. Eventually, a roof requires repair or replacement, often at a five year interval. When a roof calls for repair, the building owner contracts with a roofer to complete the job.
A roofer who arrives at a building sees the roof at the top of the building but the roofer, materials, and crew generally at ground level. To begin, the roofer must place his crew upon the roof to remove the old roof. A roofing crew generally reaches the roof using ladders or access from a building stairwell to the roof. With a roof stripped of its old covering, the roofer next has to bring materials to the level of the roof. Even for a single story house, the roofer must lift tons of roofing shingles at least nine feet to an eave. For two story houses and taller buildings, the roofer must lift and place the new roofing materials at greater heights. Building occupants and owners generally disfavor a roofer walking up stairs carrying the roofing materials, such as tar.
In prior times, roofers climbed ladders carrying packs of shingles over their shoulders to the eave for transfer to another roofer standing on the roof. The roofer then descended the ladder for the next shingle pack. Though possible and practical, this method had a limited capacity of tons per hour loaded upon a roof and put roofers at risk of ladder mishaps. For shorter buildings, roofers have emplaced ramps and walked up to roofs to unload packs of shingles. In recent decades, roofers have brought conveyors to buildings. Early on, the conveyors had their bases upon the ground near the motive power and their ends upon the eave of a building. Roofers then loaded packs of shingles upon the moving conveyor that then deposited the shingles at the eave for other roofers to place. In recent years, roofers have mounted conveyors upon pedestals at the rear of flat bed trucks. Sometimes the roofer owns the truck and more often the roofing supplier owns the truck with a conveyor so mounted. At the roofing supply center, the yard crew loads pallets of roofing materials, and perhaps other construction items, onto the flat bed, generally beneath the lowered conveyor. For bigger jobs, the pallets extend from the headache board just behind the cab rearwardly to the pedestal. The truck then proceeds to a roofing jobsite where it extends its conveyor from the pedestal, outwardly and upwardly, to the eave. A worker upon the truck bed then unloads each pallet of roofing materials by placing packs of shingles onto the conveyor. The worker then lifts a shingle pack onto the conveyor for upward movement to other roofers upon the roof of a building. A worker repeats this until all of the shingles have reached the roof. The worker may have to walk the length of the flat bed many times during the unloading and bend often to place the shingle packs upon the conveyor.